


A Million Fires, A Million Holes In The Sky

by Jenwryn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic), Dollhouse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: femslash_minis, Crossover, Dysfunctional Relationships, Dystopia, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-10
Updated: 2010-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's after the world has fallen more than half apart, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Fires, A Million Holes In The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I've lost all sense when it comes to titles (this one's from the song "[Starting](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbqijor8VLY)", by matt pond PA). Anyhoo. Written for the bonus round at femslash_minis, the prompt was "Echo/Satsu – garter belts and dirty pictures". I sincerely doubt that this was at all what the requester had in mind, but oh well; I'm notorious for being weird with prompts. I've also played really loosely with canon.

_We could start tonight  
Pull down the plastic  
Light the gasoline  
We'll race the lines _

—matt pond PA | Starting

**

It's after the world has fallen more than half apart, of course. Rossum lives in decadence and the streets are lined with trash, alive and otherwise. The bar lurks in the docks of an east coast city, salt dusting windows, and a long forgotten advertisement – Happy Hour! – almost torn from the wall nearest the door. It looks deserted, and the booze has long ago been looted, so Echo declares it as good as place as any to stay, just for tonight. She sends the others to secure the perimeters, and doesn't meet Paul's eyes, for the thousandth time that week.

The girl finds her, rather than the other way around, and Echo can't help but see something almost amusing in how little it bothers her, to have a knife at her throat, yet again. Echo – one of the people in her head, who are her, but who so really aren't – can measure the strength of the hand holding the knife. Can measure the wrist, and the arm, and the body behind it. The body is slender, as is the arm and the fine-boned wrist, but there's a power knitted into it, one which Echo has only seen in a very few women. She feels the shadows of it, herself, crumpled into other peoples' memories. She knows what it means. She touches the tip of her tongue to the corner of her mouth, tastes the possibilities, and doesn't move, not even a little bit. Quiet, and the push of her own breathing – suddenly something she almost has to think about – bizarre, the way your lungs work, demanding the most attention at the worst moments – just the push of her own breathing, yes, and the sound of the girl's. She's a stranger, Japanese, maybe, something that general direction, and beautiful, and her dark hair has been lopped brutally short, peeking, as it does, from a surprisingly clean bandana she's wrapped around it.

If Alpha were here, he'd make some quip about packs, and females, and bitches sizing each other up, and he probably wouldn't be that far off. Echo's eyes ought to be crossing, at this close a proximity, but she focusses on the human warmth of the girl – on the self-awareness in the girl's dark eyes – instead of on the unforgiving steel at her throat. Knives, she knows. Other peoples' minds, she doesn't. After a moment, she feels the pressure of the girl's strength calm, just a little, somewhere in the crook of the girl's shadowed elbow. The push of the girl's hips against hers alters angle; shifting, changing nuances.

Echo says, "We're not your enemy. I'm not your enemy. My name's Echo. We can move out, keeping going, if this is your turf."

Maybe she wouldn't move on, but it's as good a phrase as any. The girl has already begun to move the knife, regardless; slides it away, against the tilt of her slender hips. Besides, Echo knows how it is, and knows how it goes – the self-awareness in her own eyes has probably said more than any words could.

*

The others like to make camp together, when they're out on business; like to pull up positions around a fire, to keep away the dark, to keep away the thoughts inside their own heads. Sometimes Echo likes it. Sometimes she doesn't. Tonight she sits just beyond the flickering touch of the fire's light – wondering about wasting matches, when it's not that cold just yet – watching the eerie shadows of the dock's cranes, black against a murky night sky, beyond the dirty window – listening to the girl tell stories that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. She doesn't tell them her name, not really, but she mentions another word that Echo has heard more than once – _slayer_. One of them, in her head – a girl, in the far corner of her mind, a source of great strength, but strange self-fear – knows that word, and tells Echo that the stories, on the stranger's lips, are not solely stories at all; not in the way that the stranger phrases them as. Echo's travelling companions take a break from the pain that is their reality, and Echo listens to the pain of another, one she's only felt the sliding shadows of.

One of the guys has an old polaroid, that he likes to pass around between them. He snaps a picture; like they're on vacation from their families, like the ones waiting for them will want to see this, as if the ones waiting for them will even care, so long as they get home safe.

The Japanese girl, knife gleaming at her hip, catches Echo's eyes, in the sudden dark left behind the polaroid's flash, and she laughs in a way that says she knows just how absurd it all is.

Echo's stomach shifts with her laughter, and she feels warmer than she has for months.

*

_My name is Satsu_, the stranger says, later, for Echo's ears alone. For Echo's right ear, specifically, with her short hair grazing at the side of Echo's face, and her eyes almost closed. Her lashes swoop low, and touch with grace against her cheeks. She has a scar across one eyebrow, and more upon her body, as the planes of it are revealed to Echo in the darklight of the city – marks of knives, and guns, and things unknown. _Things that go bump_, she breathes, and speaks of demons that roam the dark, some with their minds as blanked as paper, some with relish and delight. She speaks of an army of girls she'd once known, of a blonde with the world in her hands, of undones and unravellings. She speaks, most of all, with her hands, and they tell of all the things she isn't saying; communicate, softly, with the little buttons on Echo's shirt, and the zipper on Echo's jeans. Echo murmurs her own biography back, whispers of garter belts and hunting bows, of dollhouses and dreamboats; writes out her losses on the skin over hipbones, and the dip of a belly marked by the autographs of war and weariness.

If anyone else were here, Echo wouldn't be speaking. If anyone else were here, Echo wouldn't be trembling and pushing, wouldn't be letting her spine arch into place, wouldn't be letting her toes stretch out into crampings, wouldn't be letting her lips close and part with eager silence. But nobody else is here, in the small room above the bar, on an old coat flung over an older mattress. But nobody else is here, not right here, and they're strangers, with their secrets, and their pasts, and the dark of the broken sky upon them; and they both know, come the morning light, that the not-quite-a-slayer will go one way, and the not-quite-a-doll will go the other. The knowledge makes them rock together, fit together, better than either has in a very long time; makes their mouths taste of fingers, and their fingers shift like weapons of a much more beautiful kind.

_Just this_, Satsu stays, for Echo's ears alone, and Echo takes a photo with the wheezy polaroid. They watch it form, on the square of white; all hazy sheets and bare skin, Echo's mouthprint on the Satsu's hip, a thumbprint on her shoulder, and the dull shine of sex upon her open thighs; her eyes, wide and amused and smiling right up at the camera, as though she does this every day, as though the world isn't ending, as though the end hasn't already come, as though they aren't the perfect strangers in their night-time unity.

Maybe they won't move on, but it's as good a phrase as any. The girl has already rolled to her side, to sleep, anyway, and Echo touches a kiss to her shoulderblade and joins her; knows that their self-awareness is what has brought them here; knows that the selfsame will take them just as far away.

*

Morning, and the docks are empty, metal ropes grating against forgotten ships; wind pushing against the torn poster by the door of the bar. Someone made breakfast while the group readied to leave; Paul eats as he walks, rough bread and the last of the honey, and doesn't meet her eyes for the first time all week.

Echo shoulders her pack, and moves ahead.


End file.
